Shadowed

            The room was filled with memories and it made Jillian’s skin crawl.  The odd thing was the room. It was a seemingly regular bathroom. It was not distinct or impressive in any way. It had the classic octagon tile floor of white and blue, a white sink, white tub, white walls with only a hint of a blue accent. The memories for this room were incredibly powerful. They flashed and spun like fireworks in front of Jillian’s eyelids. It was like looking up at the sun with your eyes closed and seeing the light penetrate the thin skin of your eyelids. But for Jillian, they were hot colored miniature explosions.

             “Are you getting something Jillian,” asked Mrs. Plainer.

             Jillian had her eyes closed and held still as she stood in the bathroom doorway. Her psychic powers were just revving up and she needed to focus on the waves of psychic energy flowing through Mr. & Mrs. Plainer’s new apartment.  Jillian did not answer Mrs. Plainer’s question.

            “Please Mrs. Plainer, Jillian will speak to us when she has something to report,” said Jillian’s intern, Carson. He took Mrs. Plainer by the arm and gently walked her back toward the front of the apartment.

             Jillian placed her hands on the doorframe of the bathroom and immediately felt a powerful sadness wash over her. She felt the years of painful memories in this room. She felt for the young woman crying in the mirror because she just wasn’t as pretty as the other girls, or the old drunk man wishing he was looking at the face of his beloved deceased wife instead of his own ragged reflection. Jillian felt the daily morning rituals of every previous tenant that wished for a better life. The emotions were heavy and Jillian slumped her shoulders under the weight.

             She normally didn’t give psychic readings in apartment buildings, there were usually too many spirits to sort through, but Mrs. Plainer and her husband were friends of friends so Jillian felt obliged to try and help them. Jillian was told Mr. & Mrs. Plainer were being tormented by something evil, something that seemed to want to hurt them. Jillian had to help. Yet, so far, all she’d felt in this nicely refurbished uptown apartment was sadness. There wasn’t anything evil that she could feel. There was just an overwhelming sense of sadness.

             The bathroom seemed to hold a lot of the pain in the apartment. Jillian looked at the tub and expected to see the energy shadow of a bathtub suicide. In her 12 years performing psychic readings she’d found suicides to be a common cause of a home’s issues. In this case she was surprised she didn’t any reading from the tub. It was clean of any real sad energy, or as Jillian called it, purple energy. Jillian wrinkled her forehead and began to concentrate harder on the room as a whole. She knew that the apartment building had been built in 1928 and she knew there would be all kinds of activity so it would be imperative for her to really focus on just the rooms she was in.

             The toilet flashed in her mind. The toilet was where this sadness and pain was coming from. In her mind the toilet looked rotten and moldy; it was festering with heartache and loss, a deep almost blackish purple swirled around it. She opened her eyes and looked at the clean white toilet. She was confused. She knew people died on the toilet all the time, it was a fairly common place to die actually, so when she normally did readings, the bathrooms were not really the usual place of strong psychic activity. She was puzzled.

             “Carson,” called Jillian.

            “Yes,” he responded from the front.
            “Can you please bring Mrs. Plainer to the bathroom,” asked Jillian.

             Carson approached the bathroom still leading Mrs. Plainer by the arm.

             “Mrs. Plainer, are all the fixtures in the bathroom new,” asked Jillian.

            “Oh, no. We loved the charm of the old fixtures, they just fit that retro esthetic we wanted for the whole place. So no, the fixtures, the sink, tub and toilet were all original to the building,” said Mrs. Plainer proudly.
            “Thank you Mrs. Plainer. I’m getting a lot from this toilet oddly enough. It’s really projecting a lot of resonate energy throughout this bathroom and likely the whole apartment,” said Jillian.
        
            Mrs. Plainer looked at Jillian with a furrowed brow.

             “The toilet,” said Mrs. Plainer.

            “Yes,” said Jillian.
            “You think the toilet is haunted,” smirked Mrs. Plainer.
            “No, I just get some very powerful images from it,” said Jillian.
            “From the toilet,” said Mrs. Plainer.
            “Yes.”
            “Really, a toilet,” said Mrs. Plainer, “I knew this would be bull. I knew you weren’t a psychic. I thought Michelle had taken us seriously when we told her we thought something was wrong with this apartment and she’d recommend her psychic friend to us. I didn’t think she’d send us some toilet loving hack.”

            “Hey, hey,” said Carson as he pulled back on Mrs. Plainer’s arm.

            “Let me go. You’re all frauds. A haunted toilet indeed. What a sham,” said Mrs. Plainer.

             Jillian looked at Carson and he let Mrs. Plainer go. Jillian sighed and looked back at the toilet. The image in her mind began to froth and bubbled up over the rim and the tank. A purple acid crawled all over the porcelain surface and Jillian figured it out.

             “Mrs. Plainer, I’m sorry you don’t like what readings I’m getting. Of course there will be no charge for my visit tonight. I just want you to know that I’m sorry for you. I really am and I hope you get the help you need. C’mon Carson, let’s get our things,” said Jillian.

             Jillian and Carson grabbed their coats and bags and headed for the door as Mrs. Plainer stood, arms folded over her chest. Jillian took one last look back at her as she closed the apartment door and gave her a hopeful, knowing smile.

             Mrs. Plainer huffed and turned back toward the bathroom. She stepped in and looked at the toilet. She turned and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

             “I’m so fat,” she said to her reflection.